with difficulty procured him a situation in a merchant's counting-house in London; and here he yielded to those temptations under which so many have sunk. He passed from expence to extravagance, and from extravagance to dishonesty; and he was at last discovered to have forged a bill to a considerable amount, on which charge he was now being examined. As the examination proceeded, and the proofs against him became full and decisive, the sorrow of the father's countenance darkened into utter hopelessness; and when the magistrates signed the committal, the unfortunate old man fell back senseless into the arms of a bystander. The magistrate was visibly affected, and even the officers were not unmoved. Nature, though hardened and deadened, is Nature still; and the heart must indeed be closed which has no touch of softness at an appeal like this to her first and purest feelings.

After him were brought up three young sparks for a street row. They had been enacting the parts of Tom, Jerry, and Logic, and the scene had ended, as usual, in the watchhouse. One of them exhibited the marks of the prowess of the "Charlies" in a eye portentously swollen and blackened. The two others seemed to have undergone complete immersion in the kennel; the mud of which, being now dried on their clothes, gave their evening finery a most dilapidated aspect. It appeared that these young men had been vastly taken with the refined humour, brilliant wit, and gentlemanly knowledge of the world in the production called " Life in London ;" and that they had determined to emulate the deeds of its triumvirate of worthies as soon as opportunity served. In pursuance of this exalted ambition, they had sallied forth the night before with the determination of having a spree. Accordingly, in the Strand, they had overtaken a watchman, a feeble old man, who was instantly, in the most manly manner, floored by a broad-shouldered young fellow of six feet high. The prostrate Charley, however, incontinently sprang his rattle, which brought to his assistance a sufficient number of his brethren to lodge, after a desperate resistance, the Corinthian and his friends in the watch-house. And here it appeared that their behaviour was by no means peaceable and resigned; indeed, the constable averred, that

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he was finally necessitated to consign them to the strong room for safety.

"At length the morn and cool reflection came,"

and found our heroes "fully sated" with their manly and gentlemanly exploit, and still more so with its consequences. These, however, terminated only at Bow-street; for, besides large pecuniary remuneration to make to the persons whom they had assaulted, they underwent a most severe and welldeserved rebuke from the magistrate for their folly, brutality, and blackguardism.

When these sapient and polished personages had been discharged, a woman was placed at the bar, accused of having been drunk, and riotous in the streets at two o'clock in the morning. This unhappy creature could not be above nineteen. She had strong traces-for already they were only traces of loveliness. Her form, wasted as it was, still retained that beauty of outline which can never be entirely lost to a finely moulded figure; and her face, in despite of its hollow eye, shrunk cheek, and shrivelled lip, shewed that it was once possessed of eminent beauty. This wretched woman was in the lowest state of degradation: her dress was ragged and filthy, and her looks were those of seared and desperate unconcern. Her eye had still the glassiness of inebriety, or, it might be, of habitual drunkenness; and when she spoke in answer to the magistrate, her language was mingled with obscenity and oaths. Oh! if there be a spectacle revolting to humanity, it is the degradation of woman! To see her soft frame consumed by debauchery-by drunkenness !-to behold her delicate mind brutified into habitual indecency, and to hear her tongue-the tongue of woman! profaned with oaths and beastliness! These are, indeed, things to make the flesh creep, and the blood run cold. I shuddered and turned away.

We were called on next; and the business, as far as regarded my friend, was soon settled. Those who were proved to have been only players were considered to have suffered punishment enough, and were let off lightly. I did not wait to see what became of the bankers and owners of the house. I left the office, thankful for the opportunity

of having seen it, but fully resolved never to go thither again. It was, indeed, natural that I should experience only different degrees of pity and of pain; but he who wishes to see nothing but what is pleasing, let him take care never to go to Bow-street.

INTRIGUES OF THE SERAGLIO.

Such a tragical scene as the following, productive of so much distress, seldom occurs but in the history of the Turks, or of the great monarchies of the east, where the absolute power of sovereigns enables them to act with uncontrolled violence.

In the year 1520, Solyman, surnamed the Magnificent, one of the most accomplished, enterprising, and victorious of the Turkish princes, ascended the Ottoman throne. He had, however, all the passions peculiar to that violent and haughty race. He was jealous of his authority, sudden and furious in his anger, and susceptible of all that rage of love, which reigns in the east, and often produces the wildest and most tragical effects.

His favorite mistress was a Circassian slave of exquisite beauty, who bore him a son called Mustapha, whom, both on account of his birthright and merit, he destined to be heir to his crown.

Roxalana, a Russian captive, soon supplanted the Circassian, and gained the sultan's heart. Having the address to retain the conquest which she had made, she kept possession of his love without any rival for many years, during which she brought him several sons and one daughter. All the happiness, however, which she derived from the unbounded sway that she had acquired over a monarch, whom one half of the world revered or dreaded, was embittered by perpetual reflections on Mustapha's accession to the throne, and the certain death of her sons, who, she foresaw, would be immediately sacrificed, according to the barbarous jealousy of Turkish policy, to the safety of the new emperor. By dwelling continually on this melancholy idea, she came gradually to view Mustapha as the enemy of her children, and to hate

him with more than a step mother's ill-will. This prompted her to wish his destruction, in order to secure for one of her own sons the throne which was destined for him. Nor did she want either ambition to attempt such a high enterprise, or the arts requisite for carrying it into execution.

Having prevailed on the sultan to give her only daughter in marriage to Rustan the grand vizier, she disclosed her scheme to that crafty minister, who, perceiving that it was his own interest to co-operate with her, readily promised his assistance towards aggrandizing that branch of the royal line, to which he was now so nearly allied.

As soon as Roxalana had concerted her measures with this able confident, she began to affect a wonderful zeal for the Mahometan religion; to which Solyman was superstitiously attached, and proposed to found and endow a royal mosque, a work of great expense, but deemed by the Turks meritorious in the highest degree. The Mufti whom she consulted approved much of her pious intentions: but, having been gained and instructed by Rustan, told her that she being a slave, could derive no benefit herself from that holy deed, for all the merit of it would accrue to Solyman the master whose property she was. Upon this she seemed to be overwhelmed with sorrow, and to sink into the deepest melancholy, as if she had been disgusted with life and all its enjoyments. Solyman, who was absent with the army, being informed of this dejection of mind, and of the cause from which it proceeded, discovered all the solicitude of a lover to remove it, and, by a writing under his hand declared her a free wo

man.

Roxalana, having gained this point, proceeded to build the mosque, and resumed her usual cheerfulness and gaiety of spirit. But when Solyman, on his return to Constantinople, sent an eunuch, according to custom to the seraglio, to bring her to partake of his bed, she, seemingly with deep regret, but in the most peremptory manner, declined to follow the eunuch, declaring that what had been an honor to her while a slave, became a crime as she was now a free woman, and that she would not involve either the sultan or herself in the guilt that must be contracted by such an open violation of the law of their prophet.

Solyman, whose passion this difficulty, as well as the affected

delicacy which gave rise to it, heightened and inflamed, had recourse immediately to the Mufti, for his direction. He replied, agreeable to the Koran, that Roxalana's scruples were well founded, but added, artfully, in words which Rustan had taught him to use, that it was in the sultan's power to remove these difficulties by espousing her as his lawful wife.

The amorous monarch closed eagerly with the proposals, and solemnly married her according to the form of the Mahometan ritual; though by doing so he disregarded a maxim of policy which the pride of the Ottoman blood had taught all the sultans since Bajazet the first, to consider as inviolable. From this time, none of the Turkish monarchs had married, because, when he was vanquished and taken prisoner by Tamerlane, his wife had been abused with babarous insolence by the Tartars. That no similar calamity might subject the Ottoman family to the like disgrace, the sultans admitted none to their beds but slaves, whose dishonor could not bring any such stain upon their house.

But the more uncommon the step was, the more it convinced Roxalana of the unbounded influence which she had acquired over the sultan's heart; and emboldened her to prosecute, with greater hopes of success, the scheme that she had formed in order to destroy Mustapha. This young Prince, having been intrusted by his father, according to the practice of the sultans in that age, with the government of several provinces, was at that time invested with the administration in Diarbequir, the ancient Mesopotamia, which Solyman had wrested from the Persians, and added to his empire. In all these different commands Mustapha had conducted himself with such cautious prudence as could give no offence to his father, though, at the same time, he governed with so much moderation as well as justice, and displayed such valor and generosity as rendered him equally the favorite of the people and the darling of the soldiery.

There was no room to lay any folly or vice to his charge, that could impair the high opinion which his father entertained of him. Roxalana's malevolence was more refined; she turned his virtues against him, and made use of these as engines for his destruction. She often mentioned, in Solyman's presence, the splendid qualities of his son; she cele